A circuit court at Anyinam in the Eastern region has sentenced two workers of Oil Marketing Company, Ready Oil, to a total of 15 years imprisonment for stealing an amount of ¢102,000.

Emmanuel Ohene Amankwah, 27, and Douglas Twumasi, 25, will serve eight and seven-year jail terms, respectively.

They pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit crime - to wit, stealing.

The prosecutor, Chief Inspector Joseph Damfei, told the court the first convict is the Kwabeng branch manager of Ready Oil while the second is a fuel pump attendant.

The complainant in the case is Samuel Kwaku Owusu-Manu, CEO of Ready Oil Limited.

According to him, on May 20, 2022, at about 10:20 pm when he had returned to Kwabeng from Accra, he spotted someone siphoning fuel into a tipper truck at his station at Kwabeng.

Mr Owusu-Manu met the first convict but the driver of the tipper truck bolted upon seeing him.

The prosecutor said when the complainant confronted Ohene Amankwah, he told him all the workers were aware of what was going on at the fuel station.

Chief Inspector Damfei explained that on May 21, the complainant went back to the station to check on the previous day’s sales and it was ¢48,000 but the convicts could account for only ¢17,617.

Mr Owusu-Manu confronted the second convict who claimed to have sold the fuel to one Awudu and accounted to the first convict, the manager.

The police prosecutor added that the complainant also detected petrol and diesel shortage in the underground tank valuing ¢19,109.50.

An audit inquiry revealed that the convicts could also not account for fuel sold on credit to Tommy, Richard and Gandhi at ¢31,000.00, ¢20,000 and ¢2,800, respectively.

Tommy and Richard denied ever buying fuel on credit from the station. Gandhi, however, confirmed buying on credit at ¢1,400 and not ¢2,800.

In his ruling, Franklin Titus Glover, the Anyinam Circuit court judge directed that an unregistered Toyota Camry the manager had bought should be sold to offset part of the cost.

The CEO of Ready Oil Limited, Samuel Kwaku Owusu-Manu, after the court proceedings lamented how most Ghanaian businesses are struggling due to cases of theft by workers.

According to him, the development has either discouraged a lot more people from investing locally or collapsed existing businesses.